


Machinery of the Human Heart

by Dien



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: AU, Angst, First Person, Jossed, M/M, No really angst, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 20:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1036098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dien/pseuds/Dien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, this moment came into my head the first time I was watching No Good Deed, after the scene with Nathan and Harold, but before the big Grace reveal. I don't really want to rehash my feelings on Grace here, but this is unapologetically AU in that it posits a completely different emotional moment behind that scene than the canon stuff about Grace. So. Yeah. Do with that what you will.</p><p>Angstorama ahead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Machinery of the Human Heart

_You would know if you had anyone in your life you cared about._  
  
I don't think I could feel it any deeper if you had just punched me in the stomach, Nathan.  
  
It must show on my face, because you stop, because you say _you're sorry_. You say other things and I hear them, I know they are words, words meant to undo what you just said. Words meant to soothe. To assuage my ego, because you think it's my _pride_ you just stung.   
  
Words.  
  
But I'm barely tracking them. I'm here in my head, in my skin that's too tight right now, conscious of the weight of my bones and the dull throb of my stomach ulcer and my breathing, my shallow breathing, the in-and-out of inefficient flesh-and-blood.  
  
It's like after a hard run, I tell myself, it's like that. My pulse echoing in my skull, and knowing that this too will pass if I just keep breathing.  
  
I don't know how to show you, Nathan.   
  
I _can't_ show you, not the truth, not what's beneath the hood of _this_ machine. I decided that the day you asked me to be your best man. I decided that the day you held Will in your arms at the hospital, happier than I'd ever seen you. I decided that the day I learned you were sleeping with your secretary. I've decided that over and over again a hundred times in the years I've known you, every time you eyed a woman across the room-- every time you made yet another person fall in love with you by merit of your smile and your charm and your being _Nathan Ingram._  
  
I didn't want you to pity me. And I didn't want to be just one more person, one more face, in the line of those who have fallen into your gravitational well. (So maybe it was my pride after all.)  
  
So I buried that truth like I've done so many others. I told myself it wouldn't be that hard. I'd already lied away my entire _life_ until that point-- attraction should have been easy in comparison.  
  
I told myself it was only 'attraction', too. That was a safe word, wasn't it? That consigned it to the realm of mostly-biology, of impulses that could be governed and shelved.   
  
I told myself I could be your friend and be happy. That I could be Harold Wren, a _good friend_ to you, your best friend, because you were mine even if that was all it would ever be.   
  
But I haven't managed it, I guess. Or I managed it too well.  
  
Because you think I don't give a damn.   
  
Because I buried the truths of flesh-and-blood so cleanly, coded them into my programs and hid them behind my monitors... that you look at me, and all you see is another Machine.   
  
I stop looking at you and I look at _it_. All around us, screens and hardware. The eyes and ears belong to the government, but the brain-- the part that makes it all _function_ \-- is my work. My horrible, beautiful child.  
  
But you were its heart, Nathan. You were the one who said to me _Let's do it. Let's save the world,_ and now we're here at the end of it and when you talk about it it's always _' your machine, Harold.'_  
  
You've got a son who's in med school. I've got a child who can save the world but has destroyed _us._   
  
You didn't used to finish every work day with a glass of Scotch. You didn't used to be a cynic-- between the two of us, you were the optimist. But maybe you're right about me, too-- maybe I've lost something in the last seven years, something I used to have, maybe this labor has damaged me in more ways than just worse posture and eyesight than ever.  
  
I don't know. I've lost perspective.  
  
I look at our reflections in the powered-down monitors, and I no longer know who's looking back. I don't think I know you anymore, Nathan; not like I used to. And you've never known me at all.   
  
I never let you.


End file.
